


Studying the Stars

by bigsunglasses



Category: The Goblin Emperor - Katherine Addison
Genre: Astronomy, Epistolary, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Science, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 10:14:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11781027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigsunglasses/pseuds/bigsunglasses
Summary: Maia's aunts all take an interest in Vedero's passion for astronomy.





	Studying the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ExtraPenguin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtraPenguin/gifts).



> Thanks to s. for brainstorming and betaing!

**LETTER I.**

_TO THE ARCHDUCHESS VEDERO DRAZHIN IN CETHO IN THE ETHUVERAZ  
FROM SHALEÄN SEVRASECHED IN SOLUNEE-OVER-THE-WATER_

Kinswoman of my kinsman, forgive this unsolicited letter and the directness of my style. Having returned recently to Solunee-over-the-Water from a voyage to Versheleen, I have today attacked my accumulated correspondence and discovered a lengthy missive from my youngest sister, sent from the court of the elves, which made for riveting reading. This I do not often say, for I am no great reader and prefer the tales that life tells with each living soul in the hero’s role. However, having no other method with which to keep abreast of family news, I read her epistle, and was entertained to hear of great upheavals across the sea in the north, and most particularly was struck by her brief account of yourself, Archduchess, as a woman with a passion for the skies and their adornments. I have sailed the oceans for perhaps as many years as you have been alive and any sailor must love the stars as greatly as they love the waters. How many stars you have seen I cannot know, but Nadeian says that you are a good woman and not a hidden thorn like so many in the crews of the land, so I enclose charts of the stars I saw on my voyage to the utmost south in my distant youth. I send this to you in the spirit of freedom of knowledge, but in particular I should greatly like to know if you have ever seen anything like that which is shown in the fifteenth section of the thirty-third page, right against the horizon, which shone at the size and brightness indicated for some weeks and was visible even during the day. It baffles me still. Fellow sailors said that it was the eye of a devil, or the lantern of a death god as he came to claim us, while others claimed that it marked the end of the world. 

_WRITTEN IN MY OWN HAND AND SENT VIA THE PUBLIC POST._

 

**LETTER II.**

_From the hand of Vedero Drazhin of House Drazhar, to Shaleän Sevraseched. Sent in the diplomatic pouch._

We hope this letter finds you well. We thank you for your own letter, which we have studied many times. Even more frequently have we consulted the star chart you so generously and freely sent us. Thank you, aunt of our brother. 

The peculiarity you noted on the horizon is of great interest. The distance you must have covered in your voyage precludes it having been visible from any civilised nation and so there is no record of it that we can find. However, we think with confidence that it must be one of those celestial objects known in the Ethuveraz as stars of greater augury. These appear with great abruptness before fading over many months; retain a constant relative position like fixed stars; and, once gone, never return. There has not been one recorded for four hundred years. We envy you. We know of them only from books, which tell us that the brightest and greatest of these special stars can indeed shine unnaturally through the dawn and into the day. Their cause is a matter for great speculation. We do not have a favoured theory, but we firmly reject the idea that they are a simply a variant of stars of lesser augury. Stars of lesser augury move across the sky and fall to the earth.

We have an equally great interest in the recurring star you noted a month after sailing north again. We believe this may be Refrenar’s Star, which was observed in the Cariospid Archipelago later that year. To be sure this was a location considerably further north and east, but for two recurring stars to appear in one year would be highly unusual. According to the late Osmer Refrenar’s notes, which his widow kindly permitted me to view last year, he suspected it was the same as that recurring star observed one hundred and sixty years ago by Captain Tativar of the _Dawn’s Brilliance_ when sailing in the south-east during the Ice Wars. We have been unable to find a record of Refrenar’s Star appearing one hundred and sixty years before the Ice Wars, so perhaps when the captain observed it, it was on its first journey after being released from Cstheio Careizhasan’s bow. 

Once again, we offer our humble thanks for your gift of the star charts. We would add that we showed these to our nephew and nieces. They begged us to enquire of you more details as to your voyage south beyond the known world, and if you saw anything of interest as well as stars. Please do not consider yourself under any obligation to respond; but we promised them we would let you know of their interest.

We send the warmest wishes for the health and happiness of you and your family. 

 

**LETTER III.**

_Written by me, Holitho, votary of Ashevezhkh at the Lighthouses of Urvekh’, and sent in the hands of Mendicant Dakh._

May our words find you well, kinswoman of our kinsman. We have received word from our sister Nadeian that you are a wise woman who watches the eyes of the gods. Though our vocation is with the salt water, in our long winters tending the lighthouses in isolation from the town we have often had the time to study the skies. It is easy to fall prey to an idleness of spirit in such times, and we are encouraged here to take up something to occupy ourselves. Our particular interest was in the conjunctions of the roaming stars and in developing a mathematical method to predict when these might occur in future. This is still imperfect. We enclose the notes of our observations and theories over the past two decades and pray you may find them of interest. Do with them as you will. A new edict from the Convocation in Chadekh’ decrees that astronomy is no longer permissible for the ocean’s votaries, and so we will pass to studying weather patterns in winters, and not raise our eyes higher than the clouds. Still, we felt the desire to see our old work in safe hands.

We have prayed over this letter and hope that, far from the ocean as you are, our goddess will bless you.

 

**LETTER IV.**

_From the hand of Vedero Drazhin of House Drazhar, to Holitho, formerly Sevraseched, in the Lighthouses of Urvekh’. Sent in the diplomatic pouch._

We hope this letter finds you well. Even as we pen this letter we are still in doubt as to the propriety of doing so, given the new edict to which you must adhere. However, we feel we must thank you. Your notes are extraordinary. Our own current research interests lie specifically in the cstheio’nohecharei, or what you call the roaming stars. Through our telescope we observe them and sketch what we see there. We long to tell you what we have seen, but dare not for fear of bringing trouble upon you.

We have a friend who studies thunderstorms, and we know she would be delighted to correspond with you. Her name is Min Raho Lemezurin, and you may address your letters care of the Lemezurar estate in Thu-Evresar.

We send the warmest wishes for your health and happiness, and pray that you find joy in your new studies.

 

**LETTER V.**

_To the Archduchess Vedero Drazhin of the Ethuveraz, from Ursu Perenched, in the hand of the family secretary Ban dach’Perenched. Sent by courier._

Affectionate compliments and salutations from Ursu Perenched. She has heard from her sister Nadeian Vizhenka that you may be interested in the enclosed advertisement, and begs you will use her as an intermediary if you wish to acquire any of its contents. She can vouch for the integrity of the vendor and the quality of his work, as he has on occasion been a partner in Captain Perenched’s ventures and spends half of each year in Barizhan. She adds that she saw three stars of lesser augury in the night before Captain Perenched proposed and wonders if three stars of lesser augury might equal a star of greater augury.

 

**LETTER VI.**

_From the hand of Vedero Drazhin of House Drazhar, to Ursu Perenched. Sent by special imperial courier._

We thank you for your letter, and the advertisement. We have spent many hours poring over its pages. The courier bearing this missive also bears a draft upon the imperial treasury and a letter for Mer Eloseliyanathet. We have also arranged for copies of the booklet to circulate among interested friends of ours. At first we did not quite believe what we read about the properties of the curved mirrors the inventor describes, yet the more we read the explanation, the more we were convinced of its truth and possibilities. Yet we are startled to discover, from the language of the advertisement, that it is far from being the first of its kind, and that its unique properties as advertised are _merely_ refinements to the nature of the mirrors. We long to visit Mer Eloseliyanathet’s homeland and see whatever other wonders the Liyanthali have invented. If your husband has ever visited there in the course of their partnership, we would be greatly obliged if he could send us some notes, however short, on what he saw.

On the subject of greater and lesser auguries we can offer no comment, as we do not study the stars from an oracular perspective. However, we can say that we think stars of greater augury and stars of lesser augury are entirely different in nature, and cannot be compounded. Stars of greater augury appear, disappear, and are fixed; stars of lesser augury fall from the sky and sometimes resolve into stone and sky-metal. 

Once more, pray accept our most humble thanks for your consideration in sending me this advertisement.

We send the warmest wishes for the health and happiness of you and your family.

 

**LETTER VII.**

_To Vedero Drazhin. From Thever Sevraseched. By the hand of the Great Avar’s personal courier._

Holitho says that you study the roaming stars. What do you see?

 

**LETTER VIII.**

_From the hand of Vedero Drazhin of House Drazhar, to Thever Sevraseched. Sent in the diplomatic pouch._

We thank you for your letter and send you greetings. Our studies of the cstheio’nohecharei began two years ago after receiving a new telescope. After studying the the face of Ulis for several months, we turned our attention to the cstheio’nohecharei. The Bragar Theory has long held that the cstheio’nohecharei, if one could view them closely, would be like the moon – a radiant surface of valleys and mountains, perhaps (so some argue, at least) Cstheio Careizhasan’s mirror which shows the world as it should or could be. Our telescope has been unable to resolve the surfaces of the cstheio’nohecharei in any detail (we have hopes of a new telescope next year), but we have determined that they are of two kinds. Daia, Ithar and Verar are as circular as the moon: Nia, Tezhon and Tir are equally circular, but surrounded by rings, the nature of which we have not yet discovered. 

We have also the increasing certainty that Tezhon has four cstheio’nohecharei of her own. At first we thought them new fixed stars, but their positions relative to Tezhon change in a way impossible for fixed stars, and they regularly are occluded by Tezhon. We wonder if, should we stand in the sky with Tezhon, these four cstheio’nohecharei would appear to us as the moon does now, striped across with Tezhzon’s mysterious rings? We also wonder why the theory persists that the cstheio’nohecharei roam the skies around our world. If they are the ideal worlds, and we the lesser, should they not then be the centre around which all pivots? There are so many questions we should like to answer, and we pray we live a life of sufficient length to encompass our curiosity.

Most astronomers in the Ethuveraz hold that studying the cstheio’nohecharei is not true astronomy, but instead is a matter of religion. We disagree, and for this and other reasons we have been unable to gather much interest in our findings. You and your sisters have sent so many kind letters to me, and from this we have realised how far the Ethuveraz is from the centre of the world, as central as we generally think ourselves. It is a realisation at once distressing and exciting.

We send the warmest wishes for your health and happiness.

 

**LETTER IX.**

_TO THE ARCHDUCHESS VEDERO DRAZHIN IN CETHO IN THE ETHUVERAZ  
FROM SHALEÄN SEVRASECHED IN SOLUNEE-OVER-THE-WATER_

Kinswoman of my kinsman, greetings. I am once more in a storm of letters. Holitho praises your delicacy, Ursu says you have a good head on your shoulders, and Thever says she wishes you were one of our sisters. The oldest sailor of my aquaintance tells me that if you sail far enough into the west, you come to a stretch of ocean as flat as a mirror, with the stars thickly clustered in milky stripes above, that are called the Goddess’s Fingers, and lights dash endlessly across this extra-brilliant heaven, and are thought to be jewels falling from the Fingers, and sailors try to reach the horizon for it must be there that the jewels fall, but those who seek for that shore between heaven and earth have never returned. If I had no wife I should seek this place, but I do, and so my heart is anchored and I no longer roam beyond the trade routes of a merchant. But if you visit us in Solunee-over-the-Water I could show you the Observatory of the Navigators, where they are currently building a telescope the length of a light barge, with shimmering lenses like the scales of a vast celestial fish. It is to be finished next summer and I think you would find friends here. Will you come?

 _WRITTEN IN MY OWN HAND AND SENT VIA THE PUBLIC POST._  
_POSTSCRIPT:_ I enclose an account of my adventures in the south for the children, and three teeth from the seadragon skull mentioned therein. They can be carved into remarkably strong swords.

**Author's Note:**

> Glossary in case nothing is clear from context … 
> 
> Recurring star = comet  
> Cstheio’nohecharei/Roaming star = planet  
> Star of greater augury = supernova  
> Star of lesser augury = meteors


End file.
